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Author(s):
Sahar Masoudian, J. Sharples, Zlatko Jovanoski, Isaac N. Towers, Simon Watt
Year Published:

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fire Behavior
Simulation Modeling
Weather

NRFSN number: 26081
FRAMES RCS number: 68661
Record updated:

The stochastic nature of environmental factors that govern the behavior of fire, such as wind and fuel, exposes wildfire modeling to a degree of uncertainty. In order to produce more realistic wildfire predictions, it is, therefore, necessary to incorporate these uncertainties within wildfire models in a way that reflects the influence of environmental stochasticity on wildfire propagation. Otherwise, the risks of the potential danger of a given wildfire may be under-represented. Specifically, environmental stochasticity in the form of wind variability results in considerable uncertainty in the output of fire spread models. Here, we consider two stochastic wind models and their implementation in the spark fire simulator framework to capture the environmental uncertainty related to wind variability. The results are compared with the output from purely deterministic wildfire spread models and are discussed in the context of the potential ramifications for wildfire risk management.

Citation

Masoudian, Sahar; Sharples, Jason J.; Jovanoski, Zlatko; Towers, Isaac N.; Watt, Simon. 2023. Incorporating stochastic wind vectors in wildfire spread prediction. Atmosphere 14(11):1609. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos14111609

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